Oh, I'm sure violations happen all the time. But I very much doubt such violations primarily benefit minorities. There's a reason these laws exist, after all. Further, "blatantly violating" these laws as a publicly traded company, to game ESG funds seems like a poor risk:reward gamble.
If violations to improve ESG score are a poor risk:reward gamble, what are the rewards of these other violations that "happen all the time"? Are the rewards even greater than improvement of ESG score?
1. The types of companies ESG funds can invest in (publicly traded companies) probably aren't very likely to blatantly violate any laws. There are significant repercussions for such behavior. With privately held companies, there's a lot more room to work in shady nonsense like we're discussing in part because there's so much less oversight.
2. I can at least point to plenty of evidence that this happens. Take this 2021 UC Berkeley Study [1] showing that job applicants with black-sounding names were significantly less likely to get called back than applicants with white-sounding names. What's the motivation there? Good ol' fashioned racism. Y'know, the exact motivation that prompted the laws in question to be written.
